| This research studied the sport and popular pastimes of slaves living on southern plantations prior to the Civil War. It was found that slaves engaged in sport and popular pastimes with much more intensity and regularity than most people commonly realize. These two activities made it possible to see the conflicts between master and slave that took place day by day, and how these developed over time. They affirmed what we know: that slave society was a harsh, brutal system, but in some senses, also a viable way of arranging social relations. Master and slave were constantly interacting, but in the interstices slaves created their own community and culture.;Slave children held a somewhat privileged position in the plantation community. Exempted from normal plantation work until sometimes as late as fourteen or fifteen years old, the slave child's early life was basically one of carefree leisure. Much of their time was spent in the simple pleasures of eating, conversing, singing, and playing a variety of different games with their companions.;Much of the sport and popular pastimes of the slave was closely linked with rural institutions and was influenced by the type of work done on the plantation. For the slave, corn shuckings, log rollings, hog killings, quiltings, and occasionally cotton pickings were joyous events. Slaveholders were ingenious enough to make these occurrences great social gatherings where work was dissembled in the form of fun and gaiety. Similarly, many planters utilized their more skilled slaves in their own "sporting" life. There were an undetermined number of slaves who were used as horse trainers and jockeys, oarsmen in local boat races, handy men in different hunting excursions, and as boxers, wrestlers, and runners for an assortment of competitive contests. These slaves were generally a privileged class of bondsmen who held a high social standing in the slavequarter and were usually thought of more highly by the master.;The slave was granted a degree of leisure time which allowed him to find pleasure out of life and prevented him from becoming a childlike dependent who was constantly subjected to the personal whims and peculiarities of his master. Many slaveholders realized that allowing brief periods of leisure was a source of profit, made slave life less severe, hopefully inhibited interplantation visiting, and enhanced his own vanity and feeling of performing selfless service. Slaves took advantage of this allotted time and various unauthorized moments to converse with friends, engage in a number of sports, and to hold parties, and other social gatherings. In the main, slaveholders did not attempt to limit the type of sport and popular pastimes that their bondsmen participated in as long as they were ready to work when called upon. |
